December 19, 2008

Joel Stein asks "How Jewish is Hollywood?"

In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Joel Stein asks "How Jewish Is Hollywood?"

I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.

How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). ...

The person they were yelling at in that ad was SAG President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment super-agent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents) ...

Ari Emanuel, who is the original for Jeremy Piven's "Ari Gold" character on HBO's Entourage, is the brother of Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel.

Whatever happened to Armenian moguls? It seemed like in the past there was often one studio boss who'd be Armenian.

In general, isn't it weird how it has become fashionable to be naive and less worldly, as evidenced by the drop in percentage of Americans who agreed with the factual statement "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews"? It used to be that people felt proud of knowing the score, of understanding the way of the world, of being clued in to how things work.

Today, though, it's cool to be ignorant. I don't think it's just people who actually know the facts about Hollywood and lied to the ADL to be safe. Judging from comments by countless anonymous people on the Internet, a lot of people are proud of being out of touch with what's happening. They want you to be aware that they've cultivated their cluelessness. It's really very strange for somebody like me who can remember back to the late 1960s. That era had its flaws, to be sure, but willful ignorance was not one of them.
The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.

As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between "The 700 Club" and "Davey and Goliath" on TV all day.

So I've taken it upon myself to re-convince America that Jews run Hollywood by launching a public relations campaign, because that's what we do best. I'm weighing several slogans, including: "Hollywood: More Jewish than ever!"; "Hollywood: From the people who brought you the Bible"; and "Hollywood: If you enjoy TV and movies, then you probably like Jews after all."

I called ADL Chairman Abe Foxman, who was in Santiago, Chile, where, he told me to my dismay, he was not hunting Nazis. He dismissed my whole proposition, saying that the number of people who think Jews run Hollywood is still too high. The ADL poll, he pointed out, showed that 59% of Americans think Hollywood execs "do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans," and 43% think the entertainment industry is waging an organized campaign to "weaken the influence of religious values in this country."

That's a sinister canard, Foxman said. "It means they think Jews meet at Canter's Deli on Friday mornings to decide what's best for the Jews." Foxman's argument made me rethink: I have to eat at Canter's more often.

"That's a very dangerous phrase, 'Jews control Hollywood.' What is true is that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood," he said. Instead of "control," Foxman would prefer people say that many executives in the industry "happen to be Jewish," as in "all eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish."

But Foxman said he is proud of the accomplishments of American Jews. "I think Jews are disproportionately represented in the creative industry. They're disproportionate as lawyers and probably medicine here as well," he said. He argues that this does not mean that Jews make pro-Jewish movies any more than they do pro-Jewish surgery. Though other countries, I've noticed, aren't so big on circumcision.

I appreciate Foxman's concerns. And maybe my life spent in a New Jersey-New York/Bay Area-L.A. pro-Semitic cocoon has left me naive. But I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.

I always thought The Larry Sanders Show had the most interesting take on this perpetual question. From an earlier article in the Los Angeles Times:

[Producer] Artie chews out [writer] Phil after his repeated homophobic jokes prompt a gay assistant (Scott Thompson) to hit the show with a sexual harassment lawsuit. “You know who runs this town?” Artie growls at Phil.

The Jews?” Phil says.

No,” Artie retorts. “The gay Jews.”

Interestingly, sometimes people go in the opposite direction and make inside jokes by portraying moguls as non-Jewishly as possible. In Evelyn Waugh's 1948 Hollywood novel The Loved One, the highest ranking figure in the studio is named Erikson, who speaks in "blunt Nordic terms." Similarly, in "Singing in the Rain," the upstanding but clueless 1920s movie studio mogul is named "R.F. Simpson" and is played by 6'-2" cowboy actor Millard Mitchell.

It's funny how history gets written. Back in Golden Age Hollywood, eight major studios were nepotistically run by Jewish moguls who hired their relatives and in-laws as executives, and the other studio was owned by Walt Disney, who nepotistically hired his relatives as executives. For decades now, a controversy has raged over whether Walt Disney was anti-Semitic. No comparable controversy exists over whether the other eight studios were anti-Gentilic. In fact, the term "anti-Gentilic" doesn't even exist. (As I recall, George Orwell had some insights into the political usefulness of the nonexistence of words.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Was Madoff running two frauds?

A reader suggests Bernie Madoff must have been running two scams, on and off: the famous Ponzi pyramid scheme, but also abusing his position as a "market-maker" to front-run (i.e., insert his buy and sell orders just in front of his customers' orders in the direction that they are running.)

The idea that Madoff was flexibly switching back and forth among his scams makes a lot of sense. It's hard to keep a Ponzi scheme going for years, and it's hard to avoid being caught front-running because it's such an obvious gag. So, you do a little front-running to get the Ponzi scheme going, turn it off before the SEC gets around to checking, turn it back on when you need to get through a tough stretch with your Ponzi scheme, etc. Further, having a well-known opportunity to front-run as a market maker serves as great advertising among your sophisticated investors who assume your too-good-to-be true returns coming from cheating outsiders, not from cheating the insiders.

Why confess only to the Ponzi scheme? Well, that probably helps limit the number of family members who go to prison.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Stop the Presses!

The San Francisco Chronicle runs a major Pulitzer-worthy investigative report:

Asian Americans remain rare in men's college basketball

Bryan Chu, Special to The Chronicle

Jeremy Lin has seen it and heard it.

Too short. Too skinny. Picked last. Asian.

Those tags stick to Lin wherever he goes, even as the starting point guard for Harvard's basketball team.

"It's a sport for white and black people," Lin said. "You don't get respect for being an Asian American basketball player in the U.S."

Although the game is brimming in popularity among Asian American youth - there are Asian leagues, club teams like the San Jose Ninjas and San Jose Zebras, and packed courts outside schools, churches and temples - Lin practically is alone.

Of 4,814 Division I men's basketball players in 2006-07, there were 19 Asian Americans (including Pacific Islanders and ethnically mixed), according to the most recent NCAA Student-Athlete Race and Ethnicity Report. That's 0.4 percent.

Players, coaches and sociologists cite stereotypes and cultural factors as reasons that percentage might not rise very much in the foreseeable future. At the same time, there are players and coaches making inroads to mainstream, high-profile basketball, and there's a feeling of pioneer spirit among them.

"Especially now that there are lots of Asian Americans growing up and playing, I have to try to hold my own in college," Lin said. "It's definitely motivational and it gives me a chip on my shoulder."
More.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Discovery" covers up the truth

Here's a Washington Post story that's relevant to the mortgage meltdown. As you know, Wall Street poured hundreds of billions of dollars into ludicrously inflated and implausible mortgages in the four "sand states" of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. In essence, this was a bet that Hispanicization and high home values are compatible. We now know the answer.

But ... was the question even asked? Did anybody at a financial firm send around an email to fellow executives asking, "Isn't California full of Latinos? Can Latinos really pay back these giant mortgages were handing them? If Latinos can't, then who is going to pay even more to move to a neighborhood that we just helped tip Latino? What exactly are we doing in California?"

Of course not. Such an email would come up in "discovery" of an anti-discrimination case, as the federal government itself is finding out:

A federal magistrate judge has ruled that the U.S. Secret Service "made a mockery" of long-standing rules by failing to preserve, concealing and even destroying evidence sought by 10 African American current and former employees in a racial discrimination case.

In an opinion filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Deborah A. Robinson effectively barred the agency from presenting a defense in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2000.

Robinson called the penalty an appropriate sanction for years of delay because the Secret Service's conduct "prejudiced Plaintiffs' ability to conduct meaningful discovery and prepare to address the merits of their claims."

The judge's ruling effectively lowers the burden of proof for plaintiffs and limits the amount of evidence government lawyers can use to defend the agency against allegations that supervisors routinely harassed black agents and refused to promote them to management positions.

Robinson earlier sanctioned the agency three times for being slow to search for documents as directed by the court and to turn over racially charged e-mails shared by white Secret Service supervisors. Jennifer I. Klar, a lawyer with Relman & Dane, which is representing the plaintiffs pro bono, said the ruling "sends the clear message that no entity, not even the United States government or the elite Secret Service, is above the law."

A spokesman for the Secret Service called the decision "expected" given Robinson's prior rulings. But he said the agency "wholly disagrees" with Robinson's findings and would appeal.

Secret Service spokesman Edwin M. Donovan said the agency has "made every attempt to respond fully and completely to all discovery requests," turning over 22 million documents, asking nearly 300 former employees if they kept relevant records and paying a contractor $2 million to search 350 employee computers and the agency server.

And what's been found in these emails? Such incriminating speech as this example highlighted by ABC News as part of a major story on discrimination in the Secret Service:

Another white senior supervisor, apparently bitter towards the Rev. Al Sharpton and angry at Ruben Studdard for winning "American Idol" in 2003 over Clay Aiken, allegedly wrote, "Reverse discrimination and political correctness are destroying virtually every aspect of American life."

I'm glad ABC put "allegedly" in that sentence, since obviously if he did actually say, "Reverse discrimination and political correctness are destroying virtually every aspect of American life," he should be taken out back and shot immediately. (You didn't know that? You should. It's in the Constitution -- the Zeroth Amendment.) So, we wouldn't want to be hasty in determining whether or not somebody said that.

But the black agent who is the lead plaintiff was discovered to have personally forwarded:

Messages sent from his Secret Service e-mail account include a comparison of black, white and Hispanic wives and how they handle household chores, parenting differences between black and white mothers and a list entitled "No U D'ient," emulating vernacular sometimes associated with low-income African-Americans and including lines that mock those who live in government housing and use food stamps.

The horror, the horror!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 18, 2008

Was Blagojevich a Mobbed-Up Bookie Before He Was a Governor?

The ABC station in Chicago reports:

The ABC7 I-Team has learned that an attorney who went undercover for the FBI in the late 1980's says he told federal authorities years ago about wrongdoing by Blagojevich.

His name is Robert Cooley.

Cooley was a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago in the late 1980's who became one of the most potent witnesses against Chicago corruption, testifying for federal prosecutors in cases that resulted in dozens of convictions.

Cooley says that before Rod Blagojevich got into politics he was a bookmaker on the North Side who regularly paid the Chicago mob to operate.

"When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the mob out there," said Robert Cooley, federal informant.

On a web-based interview show last week, Cooley said he reported to federal authorities nearly two decades ago that Rod Blagojevich had been operating an illegal sports gambling business.

During Operation Gambat in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Cooley's undercover work and testimony put away 24 crooked politicians, judges, lawyers and cops.

Several years ago, when Mr. Blagojevich was running for re-election, Cooley provided the same information to the ABC7 I-Team. Because Cooley did not want to be identified at the time and the governor denied it, ABC7 did not report the story.

On Tuesday, Cooley spoke on the record.

He told ABC7 that Mr. Blagojevich regularly paid a so-called street tax to Robert "Bobby the Boxer" Abbinanti, a convicted outfit gambling collector. In the early 1980's, Abbinanti was working for convicted West Side mob boss Marco D'amico. Bookies pay street taxes to the crime syndicate in exchange for being allowed to operate such a racket.

"I predicted five years ago when he ran the first time that he was a hands on person who would be selling every position in the state of Illinois and that it exactly what happened," said Cooley.

This is the caliber of human being who becomes a successful Illinois politician. And, therefore, this is the type of man that Barack Obama, with every option in the world open to him, chose to spend his days in alliance with, so burning was Obama's hunger for power.

I moved to Chicago three years before Obama and had a lovely time there. But never once did I ever consider becoming a Chicago politician. I can't recall ever meeting anybody in Chicago who grew up elsewhere who said they had ever thought of becoming a Chicago politician. It no more occurred to us than to apply for membership in the Chicago Outfit. But Obama spent three years at Harvard Law School telling everybody that he was going back to Chicago to become mayor.

It's not as if Obama wanted to be a reformer, like his predecessor in the U.S. Senate, Peter Fitzgerald, who brought Patrick Fitzgerald to town to be Eliot Ness. Obama didn't want to change the rules of Illinois politics; he wanted to win at Illinois politics.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Somebody's not clear on the concept

From the Washington Post, "Obama Team Develops Stimulus," about what's now being spitballed as costing $850 billion:

The potential for massive new spending has touched off a frenzy among interest groups eager to claim their share of the expanding stimulus pie. The profusion of requests from governors, transportation groups, environmental activists and business organizations is spawning fears that the package could be loaded with provisions that satisfy important Democratic constituencies but fail to provide the jolt needed to pull the nation out of a deepening recession.

"It's everybody's wish list, everybody's favorite program. And I think that's a big mistake," said Alice Rivlin, a Brookings Institute economist and former budget director for President Bill Clinton who has been advising Democrats. "I agree with the Obama team that we need a big increase in public investment, but it should be done very, very wisely," rather than through a rushed process that risks being "seen as scattering money to the wind.

An Obama adviser involved in crafting the stimulus package said the transition team was keenly aware of the potential pitfalls and was focused on funding ideas that would quickly pump money into the sagging economy, fulfilling Obama's promise to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs by 2011. Because many ideas probably won't meet that standard, the adviser said, the team is developing a screen to keep them out.

So, let me see if I have this straight ... Experienced Democratic expert Alice Rivlin is worried that the Obama Administration will spend the money too fast and the Obama adviser responds that they are devising a system to make sure they don't spend the money too slow.

Maybe I'm just not showing a positive mental attitude, but this does seem like a fundamental conundrum -- you have to spend it fast to make it a stimulus, but then you are probably just going to waste it -- that somebody ought to ask Obama about before Congress hands him $850 billion.

And why all the huffing and puffing over "infrastructure," which obviously takes more time to get going than just hiring, say, some social workers. Is it because "infrastructure" sounds manly and complex? Is it because the unions have been demanding more spending on infrastructure since 1982? (I recall identical authoritative sounding predictions during the 1981-82 recession from the AFL-CIO that America was about to collapse in a heap unless Congress voted a giant increase in infrastructure spending.) Is it to keep illegal immigrant construction workers from going home to Mexico before they can be "put on the path to citizenship" (and voting Democratic)? Is it because that's what they do in Chicago and Obama mostly knows the Chicago Way?

And shouldn't we start thinking about how to export more? The most obvious government policy to cut the trade deficit by selling more abroad is the for the government to cut back on environmental restrictions on mining.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

No comment

From Slate.com (which is owned by the Washington Post):

Where Are the Jewish Gangsters of Yesteryear?
Or, what we can learn about "respectability" from Bernie Madoff and Meyer Lansky.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Posted Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008, at 7:14 PM ET

Four days before the Bernie Madoff bust, I found myself, through circumstances too complicated to explain, in a Bukharan Kosher restaurant in Queens, eating skewers of lamb, beef, liver, and sweetbreads with a wildly mixed group of guys that included a retired Jewish gangster I'll call Lucky, since most of his rackets involved gambling of some type. Lucky had great stories to tell. He saw himself as the last of a dying breed—"I'm the caboose," he kept saying—a breed that spawned legends like Meyer Lansky, Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel, and Longy Zwillman. He was never a boss, more of an independent operator who specialized in running gambling rackets in South America, street lotteries in Africa, you name it. But it seemed he'd been on speaking terms with—and had stories to tell about—all the icons of the Jewish mafia. He was over 70 but looked like a tough 50 and wore a baseball cap advertising some fighter he was backing, and he fought like a wildman to pick up the tab for the table of eight from a thick roll of big-number bills.

Anyway, the more I read about Bernie Madoff, the more disgusted I am, not just with him but with the whole crowd of country-club suckers he allegedly conned, the phony "gentility" (in every respect) they represent.

It began to seem to me that the whole Bernie Madoff scandal was not about Jews and money but Jews and respectability. (And, by the way, let's cut the crap about Jews and money in the first place. If you look at the history of America, the big money has always been made by criminals of non-Jewish persuasions. The non-Jews who committed genocide to steal the land in the first place. The non-Jews who built up big fortunes through the disgusting and murderous crime of slavery. The non-Jews who built "respectable" old-money fortunes on the broken backs of the wage slaves they exploited. As Balzac famously said, behind every great fortune is a great crime. Old money in America is for the most part just old crime well-varnished by time.)

Still, as I found myself more and more disgusted by the (alleged) crimes of Bernie Madoff, I kept thinking—in light of my encounter with Lucky—"Where are the Jewish gangsters of yesteryear?" These were people an ethnic group could be, well, if not exactly proud of, then certainly not entirely ashamed of. At least Meyer Lansky—or "Hyman Roth," as they called him in the subtly anti-Semitic Godfather II—"always made money for his partners." Bernie Madoff, if the charges are to be believed, always stole money from his partners. (It should be remembered that while the perp was a Jew, oh so many of his victims were, too.)

A great civilization, a great people, is always known by the most brilliant, talented, and learned among them: Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leonard Bernstein. But it's also known by the quality of its crooks. (Singer knew that.) And as Jewish crooks go, Bernie Madoff would be a sad step down.

What went wrong? If you ask me, the Bernie Madoff scandal was a tragedy of misguided upward mobility—not about Jews and money but about Jews and a sadly imitative notion of status.

Here's the New York Post on Bernie and his alleged victims:

Working the so-called "Jewish circuit" of well-heeled Jews he met at country clubs on Long Island and in Palm Beach, and through his position on the boards of directors of several prominent Jewish institutions, he was entrusted with entire family fortunes.

"The guy was totally respected. ..."

The key words here are country club and respected. This is a scandal that hinges on a false connection between country-club membership and "respectability." Bernie seems to have preyed on those Jews who worship the false idol of WASP respectability. The sham gentility of country-club life.

Give me a break. Give me a gangster over a golfer any day.

A couple of caveats and a personal confession. First, I don't want to over-romanticize—as some do—Jewish gangsters or gangsters in general. The incomparable Murray Kempton, the greatest writer to grace the pages of newspapers in the past century, had a line about this. Talking to be about the gangsters he knew—and he knew a lot of them (he was pen pals with Carmine "the Snake" Persico when the Snake was in the clink)—he noted that not all of them deserve the raffish, Guys and Dolls dignity they are so often endowed with. Here's what Murray said:

People are very romantic about these guys, but the only thing I've ever learned is that if you talk to gangsters long enough you'll find out they're just as bad as respectable people.

Bada bing! Murray always found the site of contestation, the node of friction, in the way we construe our idols. I loved that inversion of our conventional definition of "respectability."

On the other hand—second caveat—I don't want to hear people, Jews or non-Jews, worrying that we can't talk about Jewish financial crime without arousing cretinous anti-Semites. I think my credentials on this point have been established well enough by the 600-page book I edited on anti-Semitism, Those Who Forget the Past. Yes, Bernie's a Jew, and he seems to have stolen a lot of money, but, as I've noted, stealing is not a genetically Jewish crime that Jews should be afraid to talk about. What's worth talking about is how he got away with it. Which is where the fetish of "respectability" comes in.

Here, I'll admit that one reason I want to talk about Jews and respectability is, in part, personal, familial. There were two sides to the family I grew up in. One, my mother's side, the country-club side (some of them, anyway) made clear—in ways subtle and overt—that they looked down on my father, because he couldn't afford—actually, better—wasn't interested in joining country clubs, much less seeing them as symbols of status and—yes—respectability.

Now, I don't think there's anything wrong per se in Jews wanting to belong to country clubs. They deserve a nice place to feel like they belong and get their children tennis lessons. Sure, some Jewish country clubbers turn themselves into pathetic Ralph Lauren manqués. (Manqué manqués?) And it's true the Jewish interest in country clubs probably derives from the "gentleman's agreement" anti-Semitism that excluded Jews from WASP clubs, driving some of the more status-anxious to build bigger and better ones—when they weren't lobbying shamelessly for admission to the very clubs that excluded most of their co-religionists. Nothing wrong with it, human nature across all ethnic groups, I suppose. Yet nothing to brag about either, in its philistinism.

And Bernie Madoff's M.O., Bernie's milieu, Bernie's happy hunting ground was the country club. Bernie was the King of Clubs. If you read the reports in the Times and the WSJ, people paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just to join country clubs that would allow them to hobnob with Bernie and the friends of Bernie, sucking up to the second-raters who sit on country-club admissions boards just so they could spend a weekend with Bernie, in the hope he'd let them into his exclusive money club, his ultrarespectable club of clubs: Club Ponzi.

What an inversion, a perversion of true Jewish respectability to imitate the most dull-witted of their WASP brethren. I thought Jews were supposed to respect brains, not golf bags. Shows you how wrong stereotypes can be. Or maybe the wisdom of Abbie Hoffman's aphorism: that Jews have to decide "whether to go for the money or to go for broke."

Give me a Jewish gangster any day. They go for both.

Take Meyer Lansky, or rather "Hyman Roth," Lee Strasberg's version of Lansky in The Godfather 2. What is it we like about him? The TV dinner tray! He runs the world's underground financial system, an illicit stock exchange and banking system combined, but what he likes most is the simple life at home in front of the tube with his wife. Sure, he'll enjoy an evening from time to time at one of his luxe Cuban casinos, but country clubs? Please. You knew Meyer Lansky wouldn't care whether he got into this or that Palm Beach Country Club, wouldn't care about hobnobbing with the respectable—i.e., Wall Street-approved—gangsters.

For me, the big question about Bernie, if he's guilty of all he's been accused of, is whether he secretly despised the suckers who fell so easily for his "respectable" scams. Secretly enjoyed creating sham castles in the air for rich losers, thereby exposing their stupidity and the emptiness of their idea of respectability.

Could Bernie have seen though it all, been a kind of Buddha of bogusness, teaching the lame-os a lesson about how worthless their sham respectability was? Or did he buy into it himself? I'd like to believe the former, but I think it's probably the latter.

It made me think of something Lucky mentioned in one of his stories about the old days: the controversy among the Jewish gangster alte kockers (old guys) about Mickey Cohen and the Irgun ship.

It seems Mickey Cohen (you know, the L.A. crime boss from the '40s and '50s; he appears in some James Ellroy novels) went around leaning on a lot of respectable and nonrespectable types for money for the Irgun, the Jewish-gangster-favored faction of Zionists in the perilous period of the founding of the state of Israel. It seems Mickey Cohen claimed he'd used the money to buy a ship and fill it full of guns and ammo for the Irgun to fight for survival of the embattled state, but alas—Mickey said—the ship had sunk on its way to Haifa or something.

There were always rumors, according to Lucky, that there never was a ship, that Mickey Cohen kept the money for himself—pulled a Bernie. Lucky didn't believe it. Honor among thieves. There was a ship. He was sure.

I hope it's true. I really think there is a difference between the disreputable but colorful and—in their own way—honorable Jewish gangsters and someone like Bernie. As that Jewish folksinger Zimmerman wrote, "When you live outside the law you must be honest." A lesson about true respectability that Bernie seems never to have learned. A lesson the old time Jewish gangsters could teach us.


Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2207074/

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My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Harry Markopolous's 19-page letter to the SEC in 2005: "The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud"

Various laws attempt to protect and reward insider whistleblowers who call to public attention wrongdoing by the institutions that employ them. But little incentive exists for outsiders to point out big shots' fraud and misinformation, other than public approbation. So, let's take a moment to salute Harry Markopolous, who first brought Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to the Securities and Exchange Commission's awareness in 2000 and then wrote them a 19 page letter in 2005 listing 29 Red Flags (you can read it here; thanks to Clusterstock).

Of course, the SEC didn't do anything substantitive about it (other than one SEC official marrying into the Madoff family). Markopolous tried to talk the SEC into taking action by warning them that if they didn't move fast, Elliot Spitzer would beat them to it. (But now we know that the Spitzer family real estate firm, like so many New York real estate businesses, had money with Madoff.)

One thing that stands out is that Markopolous wasn't alone. He was just the guy who kept complaining about it. Markopolous's 2005 letter cites numerous experts, either by name or by position, who figured out this was a fraud. But Markopolous was one of the few to do anything about it.

Also, at least two journalists, one for Barrons and one for a trade paper, exposed this scam early in this decade, but nobody cared.

There's just not much of a market for debunking. People want to believe in geniuses. Look how many people believe Malcolm Gladwell is a genius. If he isn't a genius, everybody asks, how come he's so rich? Hunnh? Hunnh?

Malcolm, himself, is dimly aware that he's kind of an idiot, but he believes that the true geniuses are the people he profiles so credulously. In turn, the folks Malcolm writes up probably had doubts about their own brilliance, too, at least until they saw themselves acclaimed in The New Yorker. After all, you can't put anything over on The New Yorker -- they've got a hung-over Jay McInerney checking the facts! So, they must be legit.

December 17, 2008

What's the difference between Bushnomics, Obamanomics, and Madoffnomics?

Do you ever get the sinking feeling that the biggest difference between Bernie Madoff and most of the public figures our age is that he admitted he was running "a giant Ponzi scheme?"

Madoffnomics consisted of making conspicuous donations to worthy ethnic causes in order to build a benevolent reputation in order to get an ever increasing amount of money flowing in to pay off those who had gotten on board early, but with no chance of later investors coming out ahead. How different is that from the Bush-Rove program of "compassionate conservativism," as embodied in Bush's jihad against down payments on home mortgages as denying minorities the American Dream?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 16, 2008

Chicagoization of the American Economy

Political reporter Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic writes:

Barack Obama has launched the era of the political economy [well, I think George W. Bush and his minions gave it a good push in that direction], where, to an unprecedented degree, the White House will determine the course, structure and function of the American economy; where, if reports of $2 trillion worth of stimuli are to be believed, the size and scope of the federal government has the potential to nearly double over the course of eight years. He's already shifted the paradigm's default from private enterprise to public action. To the extent that your program or pet cause gets to share in the spoils, it must justify itself to the Obama administration.

Everyone who wants anything from the federal government has to interface with the now conjoined office of intergovernmental affairs and public liaison in the Obama White House. To head this office, Obama has appointed his best friend and most trusted counselor, Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett has appointed as her chief of staff Michael Strautmanis, one of the Obama family's best friends and another trusted confidant. Traditionally, the intergovernmental affairs portfolio and the OPL portfolio have been kept separate, although Karl Rove unified them in the Bush White House.

Cecilia Munoz, a senior vice president at the National Council for La Raza, is a powerhouse who knows everyone in Washington. She's going to be the formal director of intergovernmental affairs. Tina Tchen, another long-time Obama friend, will be the head of the office of public liaison. Additional staff appointments will follow; usually, the deputies in these offices aren't big names; the names being considered for the sub-department portfolios in the Obama administration would have been credible candidates for the top jobs themselves.

The bigger the federal government gets, the more important these offices become. They'll probably be THE powerhouse in the Obama White House from the perspective of politics, constituency relations, interest and client groups, the Washington community, state, local and tribal governments. Jarrett won't just pass messages between the outside world and the president. Her job will be manage the relationship between the outside world and the president, and, vitally, she and her staff will have the juice to make decisions about how the Obama administration relates to just about every external constituency.
No wonder Valerie Jarrett dropped out of the bidding for Blago's blessing. Who wants to be crummy U.S. Senator when you get to be fixer-in-chief for the new quasi-nationalized economy?

And how about having a Senior VP of La Raza stationed right at the chokehold?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Spielberg and Katzenberg hit by Madoff losses

The LA Times reports "Madoff Debacle Hits Region's Jewish Community," with movie moguls like Spielberg and Katzenberg on the list.

The interesting questions at this point are whether the Madoff case represents merely a conventional affinity scam, exceptional only in being carried out among the richest and most influential affinity group in the country, or whether it's representative of a general trend where the more ethnocentric Jews are being hit particularly hard by the general financial collapse (not just Madoff), perhaps due to being more aggressive risk-takers. If so, that could have sizable political and cultural ramifications.

For example, consider the high regard with which the opinions of the Southern Poverty Law Center are treated. It basically comes down to the assumption: if they are rich, if they can afford to trumpet their assertions widely, then must be legit, right? (In truth, the vast wealth this so-called charity has piled up is more a sign of their moral corruption, but human beings respect riches.) What happens, though, if the SPLC, which gets much of its money from the kind of people who invest with the Bernie Madoffs of the world, isn't quite so rich in the future?

The other question is: Exactly what is so unique about what Bernie Madoff did, other than to admit his business was a "giant Ponzi scheme"?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 15, 2008

Bernie Madoff as an "affinity scam"

Because it's so much work to be a Mormon in good standing, Mormons tend to trust other Mormons, making them famously vulnerable to large scams operated by the small number of conmen self-disciplined enough to have spent years piling up credentials as good Mormons.

Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme was rather like the kind of "affinity scams" that have plagued Mormons. Madoff joined all the right Jewish country clubs and gave to all the right Jewish charities, allowing him to fleece some very deep Jewish pockets.

But the sophistication level of the victims is rather different. While there are rich Mormons, overall Mormons are pretty middling in wealth (depending on whether you measure per capita or per family), while Madoff's victims weren't middling.

Why did members of the Palm Beach Country Club, various hedge fund managers, and major league sports franchise owners fall for what appears to have been a simple, old-fashioned scam in which implausible returns are seemingly delivered, but only by using new investors' cash to pay off old investors? (By the way, the golf scores Bernie reported to the USGA for handicapping were all in the eighties, as remarkably consistent as his reported return on investment.)

One theory (and it's only a theory) is that more than a few of these sophisticated clients assumed Bernie was cheating -- either through insider trading or "front-running" -- and they wanted in on his illicit profits.

They just never dreamed Bernie was cheating them.

And why did Bernie cheat them in particular? Because, these days, as bankrobber Willie Sutton replied when asked why he robbed banks, "That's where the money is."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 14, 2008

Blago and Diversity

Here are excerpts from my new VDARE.com column Blagojevich, Obama, and the Diversity-Fueled "Chicago Way:"

This scandal is of particular interest to VDARE.COM readers because immigrants and immigration policy play such a large role. For instance, the go-betweens in the alleged deal in which Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., apparently the high bidder, would raise at least $1 million for Blagojevich were members of what the Chicago Tribune calls [Blagojevich Fundraiser Held by Jackson Allies Saturday, by David Kidwell, John Chase and Dan Mihalopoulos, December 12, 2008] “the close-knit and politically active Indian business community.

Another of Blagojevich’s Senator schemes has proven embarrassing to one of the strongest supporters of illegal immigration: the huge Service Employees International Union, which claims to represent unskilled workers, often illegal aliens. The SEIU is potent political force on the far left, but it curiously less potent at getting higher pay for its teeming members.

On page 60 of the criminal complaint:

"ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, 'I want to make money.' During the call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, HARRIS, and Advisor B discussed the prospect of working a three-way deal for the open Senate seat. HARRIS noted that ROD BLAGOJEVICH is interested in taking a high-paying position with an organization called 'Change to Win,' which is connected to Service Employees International Union ('SEIU'). HARRIS suggested that SEIU Official make ROD BLAGOJEVICH the head of Change to Win and, in exchange, the President-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level."

In other words, in this scenario, Blagojevich, who has apparently been under financial stress ever since his Lady Macbeth-type wife had to give up her job as a real estate agent / bagwoman because most of her commissions were barely disguised bribes for her husband, would promise to resign as governor. Obama would lean on his friends in the SEIU to give the disgraced governor a job paying $250-300,000 pushing SEIU’s agenda (which includes amnesty). Before moving on, Blago would appoint to the U.S. Senate Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama’s old boss when she worked for the Daley Machine.

Tom Balanoff, head of the janitors’ local in Chicago and a close ally of Obama, evidently conveyed Blagojevich’s brainstorm to the Obama camp.

President Andy Stern’s corrupt SEIU is less a union that battles for higher wages for its members than a front for the Open Borders lobby pushing for higher immigration. Wages are ultimately determined by supply and demand, which is why Cesar Chavez, during his prime, ruthlessly fought against illegal immigration in order to keep the supply of labor down and the price of labor for his members up. But, in contrast, Stern’s strategy is to maximize the number of unskilled service workers paying dues into his union at the expense of his members’ wages. Much of his energies go toward promoting leftist political victories rather than getting higher pay for his workers....

Seen up-close, Chicago politics resembles a bizarrely intricate multi-generational soap opera.

Obama and Blagojevich have long been allies, but never have been particularly friendly, coming as they do from very different ethnic bases. They do have a close friend in common: Tony Rezko, the Syrian immigrant operator whom Patrick Fitzgerald sent to jail earlier this year....

The second main reason for Chicago’s corruption: Chicago’s diversity.

Its long history as a major immigrant gateway means that the population is greatly divided by ethnicity. As Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, perhaps the most astute statesman of the 20th Century, noted: "In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion."

The voters who comprise Chicago’s various ethnic blocs know their representatives are sonsabitches. But at least they are their sonsabitches.

You let your group’s veteran politicians pocket some bribes because if you got all high and mighty and threw the bums out and replaced them with some public-spirited novices, your ethnic group would find itself despoiled by all the other ethnic groups’ wily old politicians.

In summary: clearly, the Main Stream Media failed to tell us much about the real Obama.

The fact is that he’s much more interesting than his canned image as the post-racial reconciler.

Not as edifying, perhaps—but interesting.

And the Obama Presidency is just going to get more and more interesting.

To learn who Obama really is, please buy my new book, which serves as a reader's guide to the President-Elect's opaque but revealing autobiography. Just click here to buy America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s “Story of Race and Inheritance."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 13, 2008

Con man executed for $416 million ant-breeding scam

From the International Herald-Tribune:
China has executed a businessman convicted of bilking thousands of investors out of $416 million in a bogus ant-breeding scheme, state media reported Thursday. The official Xinhua news agency said Wang Zhendong, who had been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to death in February 2007, was executed in Liaoning Province on Wednesday.

Wang, chairman of Yingkou Donghua Trading Group, had promised returns of up to 60 percent for investors who purchased ant-breeding kits from two companies he ran.

Ants are used in some traditional Chinese medicinal remedies, which can fetch a high price. Wang sold the kits, which cost $25, for $1,300, the local news media reported earlier.

Wang attracted more than 10,000 investors from 2002 to June 2005, when investigators shut down his companies. The closure of his business set off a panic among small-time players who saw their life's savings disappear overnight.

Xinhua had reported that one investor committed suicide after realizing he had been duped. Investigators put the size of the fraud at $416 million. Only $1.28 million was recovered.

The Steve Sailer Man of the Year Award for Annoyingly Relentless Skepticism goes to ...

Harry Markopolos, who has been a complete pain-in-the-ass for the last nine years as he tried to alert a world that totally didn't want to hear about it that Bernie Madoff's money management business was actually a $50 billion pyramid scam. The WSJ reports:

Harry Markopolos, who years ago worked for a rival firm, researched Mr. Madoff's stock-options strategy and was convinced the results likely weren't real.

"Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme," Mr. Markopolos, wrote in a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1999.

Mr. Markopolos pursued his accusations over the past nine years, dealing with both the New York and Boston bureaus of the SEC, according to documents he sent to the SEC reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In a statement late Friday, the SEC said "staff from the Division of Enforcement in New York completed an investigation in 2007, and did not refer the matter to the Commission for enforcement action." The SEC said it reopened the investigation Thursday. It's not clear what the focus of the 2007 investigation was, or why it was closed. A person familiar with the matter said it related to issues raised by Mr. Markopolos.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Obamajobs: yup, filling potholes

The Washington Post catches up to what I've been saying all along:

Stimulus Package to First Pay for Routine Repairs

President-elect Barack Obama calls it "the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s." New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal -- when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways -- while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build "cable barriers" to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would "rebuild America" with an "infrastructure bank" run by a new board that would award $60 billion over a decade to projects such as high-speed rail to take the country in a more energy-efficient direction. But the crumbling economy, while giving impetus to big spending plans, has also put a new emphasis on projects that can be started immediately -- "use it or lose it," Obama said last week -- and created a clear tension between the need to create jobs fast and the desire for a lasting legacy.

"It doesn't have the power to stir men's souls," said David Goldberg of Smart Growth America. "Repair and maintenance are good. We need to make sure we're building bridges that stand, not bridges to nowhere. But to gild the lily . . . where we're resurfacing pieces of road that aren't that critical, just to be able to say we spent the money, is not what we're after."

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is proud that his city was able to quickly rebuild the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 while making sure to include capacity for a future transit line on it. But he worries that many of the road and bridge upgrades around the country will not be done in a similarly farsighted way, given the time pressures.

"The quickest things we can do may not be the ones that have the most significant long-term impact on the green economy," he said. "Unless we push a transit investment, this will end up being a stimulus package that rebalances our transportation strategy toward roads and away from [what] we need to get off our addiction to oil."

In other words, under Obama's "use it or lose it" rule, we'll end up doing right away a whole lot of things like repainting bridges that didn't seem worth doing back when we had lots of money.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Sometimes, there are good reasons for a liquidity crisis ...

The revelation of the non-existence of $50 billion in funds supposedly managed by Bernie Madoff is a reminder of why there is a liquidity crisis, in which financial institutions are terrified to lend money because who knows which respected Wall St. entity will next turn out to be based on nothing?

Here's an interesting question: How many other Ponzi schemes and similar frauds of which we are as of yet unaware have managed to survive so far due to the trillions of bailout dollars handed out?

Can you see how this question undermines the effect of Helicopter Ben Bernake's strategy of dumping cash out of a helicopter -- why the effect of stimulus has widely been described as pushing on a noodle? With Madoff, the bailouts may have delayed the final reckoning by a couple of months. For less colossal scams, it may delay them for even longer. But there will be a reckoning, so who (besides the government) wants to pour good money after bad?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Is the balance of power shifting?

Rupert Murdoch once said in private, I am told on good authority, that the reason he decided to subsidize the neocons (a decision with substantial historical ramifications) was not because of any particular devotion to the tenets of neoconservatism. Instead, funding The Weekly Standard was simply to insure against being defenseless against vendettas by the American media and politicians against his American businesses. As a foreigner of generally conservative political views, he felt he needed to protect his huge investments in America by having at least one set of Jews staunchly on his side.

I doubt if Murdoch cares much about, say, West Bank settlements, but he understands that the small number of people in America who do care about them tend to be passionate, powerful, and rich.

Hillary Clinton seems to have absorbed a similar lesson. In 1991, George H. W. Bush was on top of the world. His Secretary of State James Baker expressed displeasure with West Bank settlements. The next year, Hillary's husband beat Bush 41. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I suspect Hillary wouldn't bet her career on it just being a fluke.

Similarly, Barack Obama has acted quite Murdochian recently, making Hillary Secretary of State and giving crucial insider jobs to Rahm Emanuel (who patriotically rushed off during the Gulf War to serve at an Army base, an Israeli army base) and Larry Summers, greatly reassuring AIPAC.

But are all these political calculuses a little too 2007? Is the assumption that the kind of guy in New York or Las Vegas who cares about Israel in the same way that rich guys in Oklahoma care about the Oklahoma Sooner football team -- but are just so infinitely rich that they must be pandered to -- getting to be out of date? What if the Sheldon Adelsons and Bernie Madoffs lose even more money in this crash then everybody else? How does that rearrange the political landscape?

I don't have any data, but I'm sensing anecdotally that the kind of man who funds Israel hardliners is losing money faster than the average. Today, the New York Times writes in "Standing Accused - A Pillar of Finance and Charity" about Bernie Madoff, the money manager who just admitted to the FBI that he had been running a giant Ponzi scam and had lost maybe $50 billion (billion!) of his investors' money:

“There was a joke around that Bernie was actually the Jewish T-bill,” the executive went on, referring to the ultrasecure investment of treasury bills. “He was that safe.”

Mr. Madoff had traveled far from his roots in eastern Queens, where as a young man he cobbled together a $5,000 grubstake from his earnings as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer to start the famed investment firm that eventually bore his name, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

He had come to move easily in the clubby Jewish world that iterates between New York City and its suburbs and southern satellites like Palm Beach.

Indeed, in the world of Jewish New York, where Mr. Madoff, 70, was raised and found success, he is largely still considered as a macher: a big-hearted big shot for whom philanthropy and family always intertwined with — and were equally as important as — finance. ...

As Mr. Madoff’s success increased, so too did his interest in philanthropy, which was often handled, much like his business itself, as a family enterprise. He sits on the board of trustees for Yeshiva, whose officials issued a statement on Friday saying they were “shocked” at the news of Mr. Madoff’s arrest. And with his wife, Ruth, he runs the Madoff Family Foundation, a $19 million operation that last year gave money to Kav Lachayim, a volunteer group that works in Israeli schools and hospitals, and to the Public Theater in New York.

Another NYT article reports:

The news was equally devastating for the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Mass., which works to reverse the dilution of Jewish identity through intermarriage and assimilation by sending teenagers to Israel and supporting other Jewish education efforts.

The foundation was forced on Friday to dismiss its small staff and shut down its programs to cope with its losses in the Madoff funds, according to Deborah Coltin, its executive director.

“We’ve canceled everything as of today, everything,” she said tearfully.

Very anecdotal, but I'm definitely wondering if the Obama-Clinton-Murdoch consensus about where the power rests is becoming obsolete. Certainly, finance and casinos will be greatly downsized for years to come. The more liberal (but still connected) media business is harder to forecast -- Hollywood did well in the last Depression because movies are cheap entertainment -- but newspapers are obviously in trouble. (Of course, Sam Zell, another fairly hardline donor, didn't put much of his own money in his now bankrupt purchase of the Chicago Tribune and LA Times.)

Could there be a pattern where the most ethnocentric Jewish rich guys get hit hardest by the crash? John Kenneth Galbraith once said, "Recessions catch what the auditors miss," which certainly proved true in Bernie Maddof's case.

Anyway, even if there is a major rebalancing of wealth, that doesn't mean that political influence will rebalance. It's not just that Jews have more money, it's that they give more of their wealth to influence politics.

The amount of wealth devoted to influencing politics in this country is remarkably small. For example, Murdoch is said to spend about $3 million per year on The Weekly Standard, which adds up to a lot over the decades, but hardly a crippling cost for a billionaire.

What about politicians? The Exile had a lot of fun when Rep. William Jefferson was arrested with $90,000 in cash in his freezer. An American politician has an icebox with $90,000 in it, while a Russian politician, despite having a much smaller economy to loot, winds up with a few blocks of Mayfair or a Premiere League football team.

The news of how little Blagojevich was thinking of getting for selling Obama's U.S. Senate seat to Jesse Jackson Jr. should open some eyes. Do you imagine anybody in China is saying right now: "It only costs $1 million for a U.S. Senator? Are you kidding? Buy me a dozen!"

With an increasing portion of the American economy nationalized, the price of political influence will be increasing. Do you think any former shareholders of Lehman Brothers are kicking themselves right now for not donating more to the last Bush campaign and instead let their old enemy from Goldman Sachs get to put them out of business while propping up Goldman's allies?

That may be the most lasting influence of the Bush Administration: by vastly increasing the power of government, the price of government will eventually go up, too.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 12, 2008

New info on the Rezko-Obama land deal

Back on October 18, a blog for the NY Daily News (via Kausfiles) reported that a Chicago real estate appraiser was claiming in his wrongful termination suit that his ex-employer had inflated the appraisal of the strip of land which Tony Rezko's wife bought at the same June 2005 closing at which Sen. Obama bought his stately home. The blog said:

We have no idea of the merits of the case ... But the fact that the suit has been filed brings back yet another item that Team Obama would rather not have to deal with in the closing days of the contest.

Of course, Team Obama didn't have to deal with it, just as they didn't have to deal with much of anything.

The Washington Times reported on Election Day:

A former Illinois real estate specialist says FBI agents have questioned him about a Chicago property that had been bought by convicted felon Tony Rezko's wife and later sold to the couple's next-door neighbor, Sen. Barack Obama.

The real estate specialist, Kenneth J. Conner, said bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property and FBI agents were investigating in late 2007 whether the Rezko-Obama deal was proper.

“Agents and I talked about payoff, bribe, kickback for a long time, though it took them only a short number of minutes of talking with me while looking at the appraisal to acknowledge what they already seemed to know: The Rezko lot was grossly overvalued,” Mr. Conner told The Washington Times Monday.

“Rezko paid the asking price on the same day Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for his adjacent mansion,” he said. “This begs the question of payoff, bribe, kickback.”

To be pedantic, it raises the question ...

According to his complaint, Mr. Conner reviewed the appraisal of the Rezko property by another firm, Adams Appraisal, which had set the value at $625,000. The complaint said he told his bosses the property had been overvalued by at least $125,000 and that a “reasonable and fair evaluation” should have been no greater than $500,000.

Mr. Conner said the removal of his appraisal “seemed understood as a crime with respect to the subpoena” of the Rezko property and the FDIC audit.

Well, who knows? There was a housing bubble going on and appraisers were doing a lot of screwy things in 2005.

But Blagogate has reminded the country that they just elected a Chicago politician to the White House.

And the appraiser's contention that his bosses inflated the value of the land Rezko purchased adjoining Obama's house at the same closing fits in with the low-level general fishiness of the deal.

As you'll recall, the Obamas got $300,000 knocked off the asking price of the house, while the Rezkos paid the full $625,000 asking price for their adjoining property. Think about it from your point of view. You see a house that you want to buy, but the price is steep. The sellers own both the house and a big side yard, which might be big enough to build another house on (or might not, depending on a complicated web of development rules in this historic district). They are willing to sell the two pieces of land separately and have published separate prices for them.

You call up an old friend and have him come look at the property with you. On closing day, his wife shows up and buys the side lot while you buy the big house, meaning that the sellers unload everything, which is obviously of interest to the sellers.

The sellers wind up with $300,000 less than their asking price for the two pieces of land together.

Question: How do you and your old buddy divvy up the $300,000 discount? I would assume that most friends would split it pro-rata based on the asking prices, which means that Rezko would have gotten about $70,000 off. If the discount was split unevenly, the normal thing would be for the person doing the favor to get more. And clearly, Obama was asking a favor of Rezko -- he called Rezko about the property, not the other way around. So, if you aren't going to split it pro rata, then Rezko should get more.

Instead, Rezko got none of the $300,000 and Obama got all of it.

The Chicago papers had reported back in March 2005, several months before Rezko and Obama bought the land at the same closing, that Rezko had illegally gotten the Panda Express franchises at O'Hare by claiming they were actually minority-owned and operated, that minority being Jabir Muhammad, the son of the notorious Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad. So, Obama would have known about Rezko being a crook just from reading the newspapers.

Of course, no doubt Obama knew far more about Rezko's Rezkoness than what was making the papers. But, still he went ahead with the deal. It's the Chicago Way.

This $70,000 isn't the biggest deal in the world. Bill Clinton doesn't get out of bed for $70,000. It's precisely its yuppie size that makes it interesting: What would you do for $70,000?

That's an interesting amount of money... It's not one of these hypothetical questions -- "Would you do something immoral for $100 million?" -- that sophomores like like to discuss. Instead, it's the kind of money that you can imagine having dangled before you at some point.

Did Rezko owe Obama a favor? Sure, Obama had been chairman of the Illinois Senate committe on Health and Human Services for the past two years, during which time Rezko had come to corruptly control the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which picked winners in the contest to build big hospitals. Obama played a helpful role in Rezko's gang getting picked to build a hospital. See, Rezko owned 5 of the 15 board members, so he wanted the board "streamlined" from 15 to 9 in the interests of "efficiency," which gave him a majority of 5 of 9. RezkoWatch pointed out:

A review of senate records shows Obama played a major role in pushing through Senate Bill 1332, that led to the "Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act," which reduced the number of members on the Board from 15 to 9, making the votes much easier to rig.

Democratic Senator Susan Garrett sponsored the bill, and the co-sponsor was Republican Senator Dale Righter. These two senators were also on the Human Services Committee with Obama. The bill was assigned to the Committee for review on February 27, 2003. As chairman, Obama sent word to the full senate that the bill should be passed on March 13.

Blagojevich made the effective date June 27, 2003, and the co-schemers already had the people lined up to stack the Board and rig the votes with full approval from Obama.

A June 2003 email exchange produced in the trial shows Obama received the names of the nominees for the Board ahead of time, from the office of David Wilhelm, who headed Blagojevich's 2002 campaign. Rezko's attorney made the point to the jury that the email was from Blagojevich's general counsel and Wilhelm's office, and indicated the appointees were recommended by Wilhelm and supported by those who received the memo.

The new Senate bill said, the “Board shall be appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate." But the Senate Confirmation Hearings were a joke. For instance, the Feds recorded Levine talking to co-schemer, Jon Bauman, the day Levine learned he was approved by the Senate from the executive secretary of the Board.

He told Levine Senate President, Emil Jones [Obama's godfather in the Senate], only allowed 2 members to be approved and "that was you and the other person he just put in."

"Isn't that hysterical 'cause you know they had this big battle going on," Levine told Bauman, "don't you just love it."

"I'm one of those independents and not part of the block."

"Well, good, you know it's good to be just a true independent civil servant," Bauman said laughing along with Levine.

"Is, is that a good thing," Levine replied, "I've never been that."

The corrupt new appointees were all contributors to the presidential hopeful, Rod Blagojevich, and the US senate hopeful Obama. The Board’s then sitting-chairman, Thomas Beck, appointed by a Republican governor, testified under a grant of immunity that he brought a $1,000 check to Rezko on July 15, 2003, to make sure Blagojevich reappointed him.

Beck also testified that Rezko told him Blagojevich was set to appoint Rezko’s three doctor friends to complete the rigged voting bloc.

Dr Michel Malek gave Obama $10,000 a little over a month before the first Board meeting on June 30, 2003. He also donated $25,000 to Blagojevich three weeks later on July 25, 2003, and gave Obama another $500 in September 2003.

Dr Fortunee Massuda donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003, and gave a total of $2,000 to Obama on different dates. Massuda's husband, Charles Hannon, is a co-schemer in the pension fund case and testified against Rezko in the trial.

Dr Imad Almanaseer contributed a total of $3,000 to Obama after he landed the appointment. On March 13, 2008, Almanaseer testified against Rezko and told the jury he was an investor in Rezko's fast-food businesses.

You'll notice the Middle Eastern flavor to Rezko's flunkies. In Chicago, Arab operators like Rezko don't control enough votes to matter, so they have to pay to play.

We're not used to thinking of health as a corrupt field. Yet, as bankrobber Willie Sutton answered when asked why he robs banks: That's where the money is. The health industry is, what, $2 trillion per year. So, it naturally attracts operators like Tony Rezko ... and politicians like Barack Obama.

You can read more about what attracted Obama to Chicago -- of all places -- to make his political career in my new book, a reader's guide to Barack Obama's autobiography, America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story of Race and Inheritance," which you can buy here.

Height and weight

In October, the government published the latest version of their National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) study of sizes, "Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: 2003-2005," which is of great interest to clothing manufacturers. And you might find it interesting too.

Let's look just at the medians for people ages 20-39, since they are most likely to be in the marriage market.



Height
Age 20-39 Males Females Diff
NH White 70.4 64.8 -8%
Black 70.0 64.2 -8%
Hispanic 67.1 62.6 -7%

So, the average Non-Hispanic white man between 20 and 39 is 5'-10.4" tall (178.9 cm.).

People are measured while wearing foam slippers.

As you can see, whites are a little taller than blacks, with Hispanics lagging more than a standard deviation behind.

The average height of the Hispanic population is probably bipolar, depending upon whether they were born in the U.S. or not. At the illegal immigrant march I observed in Van Nuys, CA in 2006, the average participant was very short, with men averaging well under five and a half feet tall. (This suggests, by the way, that U.S.-born Hispanics didn't care enough about illegal immigrants to turn out in large numbers.)

The male-female gaps are similar for all three groups, with women averaging 92%-93% of the height of their menfolk.

The 95th percentile for younger white males is 6'-2.9", for blacks 6'-3.1", and for Hispanics is 6'-0.3" For both white and black women, age 20-39, the 95th percentile is 5'-8.7", while for Hispanics its 5'6.5".

The standard deviation for white males appears to be a little more than 2 1/4th inches and for other males around 2 1/2 inches. The average NBA player is between 6'-7" and 6'-8" (and has been for the last 20 years). I believe that's measured in socks rather than in shoes, although college heights tend to be exaggerated. For instance, last year's UCLA All-American center Kevin Love was listed by UCLA at 6'-10" but was measured by the NBA for the draft at 6'-7.25.

Assuming a black median of 5'-10" and a standard deviation of 2.5", that means that 6'-8" is four standard deviations from the mean. Assuming that height is normally distributed (a big assumption),then one standard deviation above the mean is 6'-0.5 and that is the 84th percentile. Two s.d.'s up is 6'-3" and that is the 97.7th percentile. Three s.d.'s up is 6'-5.5" and that is the 99.87th percentile. And four s.d.'s at 6'-8" would be the 99.997th percentile.

Five s.d.'s would be 6'-10.5" (a seven-footer in recruiting parlance) and if the population is normally distributed, only one would be born in America, black or white, each year. So, the population probably has "fat tails" when it comes to height.

Still, it's worth noting how rare truly tall men are. When Colby Cosh asked who was the tallest man famous for something not height-related, his readers mostly came up with novelist Michael Crichton at around 6'-10" and economist John Kenneth Galbraith at maybe 6'-9". (The pretender to the throne of Albania is often said to be 7 feet tall, but I can't say how accurate that is.)

When I was young and naive, I said to a friend who had gone to three colleges, "Even if you are really tall, you have to be a good athlete to play college basketball." He said, "No, you don't. You just have to be tall. On every campus I've been on, there were two seven footers, and they were the starting and back-up centers on the basketball team." When I was at Rice, there were two guys on the basketball team listed at 6'-11" and, sure enough, they were the tallest people on campus. When I was at UCLA with 35,000 students, there were two seven footers, the starting center Stuart Gray at 7'-0" (who spent 8 years in the NBA as a backup center) and the 25 year-old backup center, a clumsy-looking ex-auto mechanic named Mark Eaton, who is said to be 7'-4" and 290. Eaton kept improving as he aged into his height and eventually made the NBA All-Star game. But I don't recall anybody else on campus close to them in height.

Among whites, the median man 20-39 is 0.4" taller than the median man age 40-59 and 1.6" taller than the median man 60 or over (however, old people shrink).



Weight
Age 20-39 Males Females Diff
NH White 186 148 -20%
Black 190 171 -10%
Hispanic 176 155 -12%

People are weighed wearing disposable paper medical gowns.

At 148 pounds, younger white women average only 80% as heavy as younger white men, but black women weight 90% as much as their menfolk, so the male-female gap is only half as large among blacks. And Latinas weight 88% as much as Latinos.



Waist
Age 20-39 Males Females Diff
NH White 37.0 33.5 -9%
Black 36.4 36.8 1%
Hispanic 37.1 36.1 -3%

So, the median white man age 20-39 has a 37 inch waist, and the median younger white woman has a 33.5 inch waist, 9% smaller. (Pregnant women are excluded.) Among blacks, however, the typical younger woman has a wider waist than her male counterpart.



BMI
Age 20-39 Males Females Diff
NH White 26.4 24.5 -7%
Black 27.8 29.4 6%
Hispanic 27.7 27.7 0%

The oft-criticized Body Mass Index (BMI) reflects the same findings: whites are the skinniest, with black women considerably fatter than black men.

The total sample size who were subjected to quite a few measurements were an impressive 19,593, so subgroup sample sizes were quite adequate. (The smallest subgroup shown below numbered 361.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

December 11, 2008

Penny Ante Stuff

Prominent NYC lawyer Marc S. Dreier, head of a high-flying 250 lawyer firm on Park Avenue, was arrested earlier this month for stealing something like $380 million by selling forged promissory notes from other institutions to hedge funds by ... pretending to be somebody else. According to the NYT:

Mr. Dreier was initially arrested in Canada on Dec. 2 after an elaborate ruse to sell $45 million of the phony promissory notes there collapsed, according to a Toronto police department document.

After meeting with a lawyer for a teachers’ pension plan on another matter and obtaining that man’s business card, Mr. Dreier asked to use a phone and was ushered into a conference room by a secretary, according to the document. A short time later, he used the room to meet with the representative of a hedge fund whom he had previously invited to the offices, and impersonated the lawyer whose card he had just been handed.

But the scheme quickly unraveled, authorities said, when the hedge fund representative and the secretary felt something was amiss, and Mr. Dreier was arrested soon after.

By this point, I'm kind of disappointed that this guy only stole $380 million. Now, stealing $380 billion using other people's business cards, well, that would be impressive. But $380 million in this day and age is nothing.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

So much for bailing out the automakers ...

USA Today reports:

Federal authorities have charged a Wall Street veteran with running a Ponzi scheme that prosecutors allege lost a staggering $50 billion.

Bernard Madoff, founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, 70, was charged on Thursday by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission with securities fraud. The charge comes a day after the complaint says Madoff told some high-level employees that his investment management business was a "fraud" and "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme."

The U.S. Attorney's complaint accuses Madoff of losing some of his investors' money on bad trades, then attempting to hide it by replacing that lost money with cash from his other investors. Madoff's investment management business had between 11 and 25 clients and $17.1 billion in assets as of a Jan. 7 filing, the complaint says, and one of Madoff's senior employees had "several million" under his management.

The scheme finally came unraveled because Madoff's clients asked for $7 billion in redemptions as of the first week of December, the complaint says, and Madoff couldn't come up with the cash to cover the requests.

Authorities say Madoff told senior employees at a private meeting at his apartment in New York that he planned to turn himself in within a week and that he was "finished" and had "absolutely nothing." Madoff estimated he had lost at least $50 billion but first wanted to pay out his remaining $200 million to $300 million to employees, family and friends, the complaint says.

Fifty billion here, fifty billion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money.

The government will presumably have to bail out Madoff's investors, so that's all the money that could have gone to bailing out Detroit (after all, Madoff's investors don't actually make anything, so they come first).

Oh, I forgot, we can just make up more money at no expense. Never mind!

Anyway, that reminds me of what a brilliant career move I made from changing from being a corporate executive to being a writer. Sure, it may not have seemed like that smart a switch from the perspective of my net worth and all that, but here's the thing: writers don't retire, thus positioning me perfectly for our coming Work Until You Die economy.

In other kinds of jobs, you reach a point where you just feel too old to keep making the 7am flight to Dallas, so you want to retire. But writers can keep shuffling from their bedroom to their home office indefinitely.

Sure, when I'm 80, I won't have as many original insights as I do now. But, I have too many now. I'll be more popular then.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

OMG, we just elected a Chicago politician to be President!

As John Kass of the Chicago Tribune points out, the media in 2008 devoted far more attention to a Vice-Presidential candidate's career in a small town in Alaska than to a Presidential candidate's career in the transportation hub of the United States.

The best antidote for the media miasma about the next President of the United States is ... my book, America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story of Race and Inheritance," which you can buy here. I get a really nice cut of out of each book sold, so I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd pick up a copy or two.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer